Conversations from the Hall of Fame

Janice M. Miller, veterinarian, interviewed 2003

(Time: ~7:17 minutes)

I was born and raised in Kansas actually the town is Mentor, Kansas which is a little small town just south of Salina. Spent my whole 17 years there before I went to school. I went school at Kansas State for my undergraduate degree and veterinary degree and then went to Wisconsin for a PhD. 

Why Science? 

When I first got interested in animal health it was to be a veterinarian and I, like most little girls, wanted to take care of dogs and cats and later on in high school because of a biology teacher I got interested in science and got the idea that I would like to study diseases of animals and do research on that so that's how I ended up going to veterinary school with the idea of being a researcher. 

When I applied for veterinary school I told them I wanted to do research and they asked me what I thought a researcher did. So, of course I really didn't have a clue but I said I think what I envision myself doing is sitting in front of a microscope all day just by myself back in a corner. That really appealed to me and for the most part that's what I've been able to do because I've been able to stay as a bench scientist in ARS which is very fortunate and succeed at that level without having to become an administrator which I didn't want to do. 

As far as I'm concerned the bench science it what gives me the great satisfaction so I'm very glad that is what I have been able to do for the whole career. 

Recognition

As far as being rewarded in other people's eyes for the career probably the first recognition was being the Distinguished Scientist of the Year in ARS back in 1988 and I was just amazed that I would have that kind of recognition. Getting inducted into the National Academy of Science two years ago was a big surprise and now this is really kind of the culmination for me because the Hall of Fame is something that in ARS I would look to as being the most significant recognition that you could get. I've just looked at the plaques on the wall of the other 57 people that are there and I know a lot of them and I can hardly believe that I have the same kind of stature as they do but I'm very pleased and proud of that. 

Words of Wisdom 

I don't think I have a lot of sage advice to give to any young scientists except enjoy it because it really is a very fulfilling career and sometimes I think that people get so tied up in the rules and the regulations and the requirements and everything that they forget that this is a great job. We get to do something that is very exciting and finding out new things is fun and just grateful that you have a terrific opportunity.

Future of the Work 

Well my specific project which deals with the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies which is part of the mad cow disease family of agents. I think that probably within 10 years the interest in that will die down because I think that the disease has peaked in England and the number of human cases of so called mad cow disease will diminish so probably that project will come to an end because of the lack of interest, hopefully, I mean that would be the good news. 

As for animal health I think the future is just really exciting because now that we have the genome sequenced, the human genome, the animal genomes are going to be sequenced shortly. Agents,  infectious agents are being genomed and so the next wave of molecular activities will bring all kinds of opportunities I think to control disease that we never had before and so it's a bright future I think for the young people. I couldn't do it because I haven't been trained in the molecular techniques but there are a lot of bright young people out there that will certainly have a lot of opportunity to contribute to animal disease.  

Early Career 

The first project that I was involved in was the bovine leukemia virus project and that was a very exciting time because people are looking for viruses that cause human cancer and although it turns out that there are very few viruses involved in human cancer there are quiet a few viruses involved in animal cancers and so our discovery of the bovine leukemia virus and recognizing that it was typical transmitted among cattle, we could devise methods to detect it and know how to avoid transmission of it and that was a very exciting time even though it didn't turn out to be a good model for cancers of humans just for animal diseases it was a very exciting period of discovery.

Our finding of the bovine leukemia virus and the way that we found it, the method was used later to as part of the way to isolate the HIV virus. Once the virus was identified I don't think people recognized how quickly things happened because people expect it to be over night but from a scientist's view point I think it was extremely rapid within a couple of years they had a test available, didn't have a cure of course because it turns out that's an agent the HIV agent is very, very difficult because of the biological way that it is developed but never the less we did give the tools for understanding how it was transmitted and how to control it. Sometimes doing it is the hard part. 

Life after Science 

For the first time in my life I have no plans my whole life has been planned now this is going to be a new experience because I have no plans. I have said that I am walking away and not looking back that I wanted to do totally my own thing now. I've done my science and I think it's time for the younger people to take it and run with it. They don't need an old fogey like me around to tell them what to do. 

I'm sure I will still maintain my interest in particularly in the first few years as to what's going on in our projects because the projects I was involved were all long term situations so for the next few years there will be answers coming out of some of the work that we initiated. I want to follow that.